Literature. — W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, pp. 54-56, The Cities of St. Paul, 1907, p. 3S5ff., Hi.-<t. Com. on Gal., 1S99, pp. 228-234 ; W. Smith, DGRG i. [18561770. JaMKS StEAHAX.
DESCENT INTO HADES.— 1. By the Hebrews, Sheol or Hades was regarded as the under world, VOL. 1. — 19
a subterranean region of abysses and mysterious waters upon which the earth rested (Ps 24^ 136®). It was the region to which all souls passed after death, there to live a shadow-like existence, in- capable of the higher forms of spiritual activity, such as the praise of Jahweh (Ps 6^). In I^T times, a distinction has been drawn between the departments of Sheol inhabited by the good and the bad : ' Paradise ' is the resting-place of the righteous and penitent (Lk 23^), while the ' abyss ' (q.v.) is spoken of as the abode of demons (Lk 8^^ ; cf. Rev 91 IP 17^201).
2. Those who accepted the Jewish cosmogony believed that, at death, every soul passed to this hidden region. The death of Christ involved for Him, as for every son of man, the same journey. To the first disciples, that He ' descended into Hades' would not present itself as an article of faith, or as a matter of revelation ; it Avas implied in the fact of His death. That He went into ' the abyss ' does not need argument for St. Paul (Ro 10^ ; cf. Eph 4^ Kare^T] els to. Karurepa /J-eprj ttjs 7-^s) ; that His soul was in Hades after the Cruci- fixion is assumed as a matter of course in Ac 2^^. No one in the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic Age Avould have been impelled by dogmatic considera- tions to insert the article of the Descent into Hades in the baptismal creed, for it was only another way of saj'ing that Christ died. In the NT, accordingly (with the exception of 1 P 3^^ 4®), the references to Christ's Descent into the under world are incidental only, introduced to illustrate special points ; e.g. Ac 2*1, that Christ did not remain in Hades ; Mt 12^°, that the period of His sojourn ' in the heart of the earth' was ' three days and three nights' ; Eph 4^, that the Crucified who descended is the Ascended Lord ; and Lk 23"'^, that the penitent thief would be in security with Christ in the unseen life after death. (It is to be observed, however, that Lk 23^^ is not quoted by the Fathers as illustrating the Descensus, some of them — e.g. Tertullian — holding that Paradise was not a de- partment of Hades, but distinct from it. )
3. But the question was inevitable : when Christ descended to the under world, what office did He pei-form there? And in attempting to find an answer to the question as to the consequences and the purpose of Christ's Descent into Sheol, the early Christians naturally betook themselves to the OT and to the forecasts of Messiah's mission which they found therein. Even before specula- tion began on these points, it had been natural to use OT language when the fact of the Descensus Avas mentioned : thus Ro 10" goes back to Dt 30^^, and Ac 2^1 to Ps le^". Now the OT suggested a deliverance of the righteous from Sheol, and this thought Avas destined to be prominent in the development of Cliristian eschatology.
Sheol, as Ave have seen, is the abode of the spirits of the departed (Ps 49''*), and it is from Sheol, personified as the ruler of this gloomy region, that the righteous Hebrew looked for deliverance. ' God will redeem my soul from the poAA-er of Sheol ' was his hope (Ps 49'^ ; cf. Ps 30^). The Divine promise Avas, ' I Avill ransom them from the power of Sheol' (Hos 13"). 'Because of the blood of the covenant I have brought forth thy prisoners out of the pit Avherein is no water ' (Zee 9^1) is a prophetic forecast.* To St. Paul's thought, the climax of Christ's victory was the conquest of death (1 Co 15'-'') ; and it Avas part of the purpose of His liumiliation that in His triumph the poAvers of the under Avorld should own His SAA'ay (Ph 2^" IVa irdv yovv Kafi^pr) . . . KaTaxOoviuv), When it Avas asked how this subjugation Avas exhibited, the answer Avas ready to hand. It Avas in the deliverance from Satan's bondage of the dead Avhom
* So it is incerpreted by Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat. xiiL 34),
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DESCENT INTO HADES
he had in thrall in Sheol. Christ has the keys of death and of Hades (Rev l^^).
It is possible that some such conception of Messiah's mission to the departed ■was prevalent in pre-Christian days. Two passages from the Bcreshith Bahba* are cited as testifying to Jewish belief : ' When they that are bound, they that are in Gehinnom, saw the light of the Messiah, they rejoiced to receive him ' ; and 'Tliis is that which stands written. We shall rejoice and exult in thee. When ? When tiie captives climb out of hell, and the Shechinah at their liead.' But the date of this literature is uncertain, and it may be affected by Christian ideas. At any rate, this conception of the purpose of Christ's Descensus is prominent in the earliest Christian documents. Thus in a section of the Ascension of Isaiah (ix. 16 f.) assigned by Charles to the close of the 1st cent, we have : ' when he hath plundered the angel of death, he will ascend [sc. from Hades] on the third day . . . and many of the righteous will ascend with him ' (cf. also x. 8, 14 and xi. 19, ' They crucified him, and he descended to the angel of Sheol'). With this should be compared Mt 27^'^- ^3, perhaps the earliest suggestion of the thought that the saints were freed from the bondage of Hades by the Descent of Christ.f In a 2nd cent, section of the Sibylline Oracles (i. 377) we have : owot av Aiduvios oIkov \ /Sj^crerat ayyeWwv iwavadTaairii' redvewcnp ; and again (viii. 310): ij^ei 5'els 'Aidyjv dyyeWuv iXTrida ira<jLv. The date of the (Christian) interpolation in the Latin version of Sir 24'*^ is not certain, but the words interpolated are significant : ' Penetrabo omnes inferiores partes terrae et inspiciam omnes dorniientes, et illuminabo onmes sperantes in Domino.' We have an explicit statement in Origen, who, commenting on Ro 5", saj's : ' Christum vero idcirco in infernum descendisse, non solum ut ipse non teneretur a morte, sed ut et eos, qui inibi non tam praevarica- tionis crimine, quam moriendi conditione habe- bantur, abstraheret.' J Origen elsewhere inter- prets the binding of the ' strong man ' of Mt 12-'' as a binding of Satan in the under world, and Irenreus gives the same exegesis.§ This is the general view : the express purpose of Christ's Descent to Hades was to liberate the souls who were there in thrall. The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus works out, in picturesque detail, the story of the ' Harrowing of Hell,' a legend which deeply im- pressed the consciousness of Christendom. So •wide-spread was this belief in the early Christian period that a controversy arose as to whether the souls of Jews or of Gentiles or of both were in- cluded in the deliverance wrought by Christ in Hades. Marcion — if IrenseusH is to be trusted — held that it was only for the redem))tion of the wicked heathen of olden time, but Justin H and Irenajus ** restricted it to the righteous of Israel ; while Clement of Alexandria ft and his school included both Jew and Gentile in its grace. We find, then, that, while the NT gives no explicit sanction to this idea of the conquest of the powers of the under world and the deliverance of im- prisoned .souls by Christ's Descent into Hades, it was firmly established in the 2nd and 3rd cent., and that it grew out of OT phrases about the redemption from Sheol.